On the 73rd anniversary of the Fall of Corregidor, here are 10 facts that Filipinos may not know about the island fortress of Corregidor and its adjoining islands.
The cement for concrete used to line the 30-foot to 40-foot-thick walls of Malinta Tunnel (an 836-foot-long, fishbone-shaped system of bombproof tunnels with three 227-meterx8-meter main sections and 24 49-meterx4.5-meter laterals) was, ironically, Asada cement bought from the Japanese.
Corregidor and Caballo islands are believed to be the exposed rim of a volcano that form parts of a potentially active (according to the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology) volcanic caldera. With a rim elevation of 173 meter (568 foot) and a base diameter of 4 kilometers (2.5 meter), it has no known eruptions in the Holocene Period (around 10,000 years ago), as its last eruption was about 1 million years ago, based on the age of deposits.
Malinta Tunnel was bored out of Malinta Hill using “forced labor” in the form of 1,000 convicts from the Old Bilibid Prison in Manila, most of whom were serving life sentences. The Philippine Commonwealth offered them as equity in the construction of the Malinta Tunnel Project.
The island’s name was either derived from the Spanish name for corrector (one who checks and corrects papers of incoming ships), or from the Spanish word corregidor (the man who heads the corregimiento, or unpacified military zone).
Though Corregidor is much nearer geographically (it is 3 nautical miles away with 30-minute travel time from Barangay Cabcaben) and, historically, to Mariveles (Bataan), it belongs to Cavite, being under the territorial jurisdiction and administrative management of Cavite City. When you are on the island, you can see more of Bataan than Cavite City.
The 880-meter (1,520-foot)-long, three-story-high and hurricane-proof Mile Long Barracks, though less than a third of a mile long, is reputedly the world’s longest military barracks. It housed 8,000 men and was the headquarters of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
The flagpole, where the American flag was lowered during the May 6, 1942, surrender to the Japanese and raised during the March 2, 1945, liberation, is actually a mast of a Spanish warship, Reina Cristina, which was captured by Adm. George Dewey after the May 1, 1898, Battle of Manila Bay and put up in Corregidor. The American flag was lowered for the last time on October 12, 1947, and the Philippine flag hoisted in its stead.
Corregidor had “disappearing” gun batteries. These disappearing guns were mounted on a “disappearing carriage,” which enabled a gun to hide from direct fire and observation. Battery Crockett and Cheney each had two 12-inch “seacoast guns, while Battery Grubbs had two 10-inch guns.
Fort Drum, the “concrete battleship,” seven minutes southeast of Corregidor, must be unprecedented in the history of military fortifications. Located on the former small, rocky El Fraile Island, this heavily fortified 240-foot- long, 160-foot-wide and 40-foot-high citadel bristled with 11-inch guns (including two batteries with rotating turrets with two 14-inch guns). It was built from 1909 to 1919 by the US Army Corps of Engineers, who flattened the island and reconstructed it to resemble the forepart of a battleship, with one end flat and the other shaped like a prow.
Though Corregidor and the adjoining islands are bristled with 56 coastal guns and mortars in 23 seacoast batteries and 76 (28 3-inch and 48 50-caliber) anti-aircraft guns in 13 batteries, with artillery models dating back to 1890, only the eight 12-inch mortars of Battery Geary and the four 12-inch mortars of Way proved to be the best and most effective for the defense of Corregidor during the Japanese siege.